He uses the alternating views from the officers of both sides of the conflict, thus making you feel as you are right with them, culminating in the horrific and tragic end of the battle. The Killer Angels - The author brings the Battle of Gettysburg and the Civil War to life in this wonderful novel. Four stars instead of five as the author's habit of inserting a comma instead of the word 'and' was a bit of a distration for me. One of them slipped in the mud and was told that since the general decreed the roads to be in good condition therefore there is no mud. One moment in the book that particularly touched me was during a retreat of Federal soldiers. I've come across the names in history classes (oh so long ago) and the occasional novel covering this period, but it was wonderful to have them brought to life as this author did, and we are once again reminded that was is indeed h***.

I was most particularly moved by Lee and his torn loyalties to the US Army and his home state of Virginia, and most especially by the great Stonewall Jackson. Gods and Generals - Fascinating portrayal of a sad time in US History, as told from the perspectives of the generals involved in these campaigns. These three books should be required reading in school. Today there is a Michael Shaara Award for Excellence in Civil War Fiction, established by Jeffrey Shaara, awarded yearly at Gettysburg College. Jeffrey was the one to finally get Michael's last book, For Love of the Game, published three years after he died. His most famous is the prequel to The Killer Angels, Gods and Generals. Shaara's son, Jeffrey Shaara, is also a popular writer of historical fiction most notably sequels to his father's best-known novel. Shaara died of another heart attack in 1988. His novel about the Battle of Gettysburg, The Killer Angels, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1975. The stress of this and his smoking caused him to have a heart attack at the early age of 36 from which he fully recovered. He later taught literature at Florida State University while continuing to write fiction. He was born to Italian immigrant parents (the family name was originally spelled Sciarra, which in Italian is pronounced the same way) in Jersey City, New Jersey, graduated from Rutgers University in 1951, and served as a sergeant in the 82nd Airborne division prior to the Korean War.īefore Shaara began selling science fiction stories to fiction magazines in the 1950s, he was an amateur boxer and police officer.

Michael Shaara was an American writer of science fiction, sports fiction, and historical fiction.

The killer angels novel